LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Shelf JCtS 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



/ 




A NOBLE LIFE. 



/ 

7 BY 



HOWARD DUFFIELD, D.D., 

MINISTER OF THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 
NEW YORK CITY. 



m " **>»^_ 

£68 i *p% 



NEW YORK: 

ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY, 

(incorporated) 
l83 FIFTH AVENUE. 



$ H f 






COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY 
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY, 

(INCORPORATED) 



The Love of Christ constraineth us. 

2 Corinthians iv. 14.0 



A NOBLE LIFE. 

Commonplace chafes. Humdrum 
galls. Monotony grinds. Yet they 
are our inseparable companions. 
They keep step with us the whole of 
the way. We are never far from 
their side, never out of their sight. 
No wonder that sometimes the 
clouds hang low, and heaven is hid- 
den. No wonder that heart failure 
is frequent. No wonder that the 
moment comes when living seems 
drudging ; when we tire of trying ; 
when even in this high noon of mod- 
ern knowledge we stand tongue-tied 

5 



A Noble Life. 



before the stony challenge of the 
ancient sphinx : — 

"What of it all, when it all is 
done?" 

From the deep places of the human 
heart there rises a hungry cry for 
greatness. Weariedly we reach out 
"lame hands," if haply we may but 
touch the hem of majesty. With 
unsleeping eyes we peer into every 
quarter for a glimpse of grandeur. 
We persist in looking the wrong 
way. We keep on beating the wrong 
bush. The sublimity which we seek 
is not without us, but within. 

The man wants manhood who can 
gaze unthrilled upon the spires and 
domes of the cathedral-like moun- 
tains, or walk unstirred the pillared 
6 



A Noble Life. 



aisles of forest temples ; or listen inl- 
awed to the weird and never quiet 
diapason of the sea. The man is 
lacking in finest faculty who is not 
enkindled by the majestic ideas 
which have been chiselled into 
stately marbles, or pencilled upon 
the glowing canvas ; who is not en- 
thralled by the matchless harmonies 
through which master spirits have 
whispered their mysterious secrets to 
uncounted generations ; who is not 
enchanted by the spell of the pen, that 
magic wand with which the magicians 
of the mind, shape the course of the 
world. But more sublime than 
sculptured stone, or snow-crowned 
Alps, or sweetest music, or richest 

rhetoric, is a noble life. Character 

7 



A Ncble Life. 



dwarfs the most magnificent of things 
inanimate. Soul is the true patent 
of nobility. Royalty of spirit may 
be uninvested with the circumstances 
of external grandeur. The noble 
heart may look out upon the world 
through a face that is homely. It 
may move upon a plane that is lowly. 
It may spend its energies upon en- 
deavors that are ordinary. Its pos- 
sessor may be "in bodily presence 
weak, and in speech contemptible/' 
but let head and hand and heart be 
welded in the furnace glow of a 
lofty and uplifting purpose, and men 
recognize the king. 

It was intensity of purpose that 
put power into Paul. There never 
lived a man so dead in earnest as 



A Noble Life. 



that little tent-maker from Tarsus. 
" Deserts beheld him battling with 
their sand-storms. Fierce river tor- 
rents were breasted by his arm. 
Ocean held him a solitary waif float- 
ing upon its surface. Again and 
again did the cruel sea cast him ship- 
wrecked upon the land, and the land 
sent him back full of high and holy 
enterprise to ocean. Singing at mid- 
night in the dungeon, weaving tent- 
cloth at the loom, disputing among 
the philosophers upon Mars Hill, 
marching over the stones of the Ap- 
pian Way, clanking his fetters while 
he writes in his hired house in Rome, 
— where, and in what employ do we 
not find this strangely fervent man ?" 
Ordinary motives had lost their grip 

9 



A Noble Life. 



upon him. Trial could not depress 
him. Toil could not daunt him. 
These things were his glory. What 
spark kindled such flaming zeal ? 
What magnetism drew him on and 
helped him up in the face of such 
relentless opposition ? What talis- 
man, with mystic power, enabled 
that man to conquer all the foes 
that challenge the progress of a human 
soul ? Can his secret be mastered 
by other minds ? Can that energy 
be generated within our hearts? 
Hearken to his answer: " The love 
of Christ constraineth us" The 
simple, single secret of a noble life 
is the constraining power of a 
Saviour's love. 

There had been a day when Paul 



A Noble Life. 



regarded the death of Christ with 
very different feelings. There had 
been a day when the thought of 
the crucifixion only wreathed his 
lips with a stern smile of satisfac- 
tion that a malefactor had suffered 
his just deserts. There was a day 
when the single impulse which the 
death of the Nazarene imparted to 
the man of Tarsus was the spur of a 
vindictive frenzy to exterminate His 
followers. But the light that flooded 
the Damascus highway with glory, 
flashed radiance upon Golgotha. 
Paul discovered that the hill of Cal- 
vary was the summit of sublimity; 
that the thorn crown of Jesus was 
the diadem of an ineffable royalty ; 

that the cross crimsoned with agony 

ii 



A Noble Life, 



was the altar of a mysterious sacri- 
fice of love, whereon the victim had 
made an offering of himself. He 
now caught with quickened hearing 
those tender accents, "The Son of 
man has come to seek and to save 
that which was lost, and to give His 
life a ransom for many." His soul 
melted as he listened to the quiver- 
ing accents of the dying sufferer 
while He prayed for the forgive- 
ness of His foes. The knowledge of 
that grace brought Paul to a knowl- 
edge of himself. All opposition to 
the Christ went down before the 
flood of feeling that came surging 
out at the touch of a mercy great 
enough to take him into its embrace. 
Standing before the cross of Jesus, 



A Noble Life. 



he loses sight of everything else, and 
raises the exultant shout, " God for- 
bid that I should glory save in that 
cross of my Lord Jesus Christ ; for 
He was the Son of God, and He 
loved, and He died for me." 

This feeling of personal interest 
in the love of the crucified Jesus 
made it sheer impossibility for that 
man to live a life of commonplace. 
He felt the pressure of that motive 
to be phenomenal. He ransacks his 
affluent vocabulary to find the phrase 
that will aptly express its intensity. 
With vulture-eyed nicety he swoops 
upon a word used in the New Testa- 
ment to express all kinds of resistless 
power : the surge of a crowd, the 

clutch of the police, the tenacity of 

*3 



A Noble Life. 



disease, and as though the impulse of a 
noble life generated by personal recog- 
nition of the Saviour's love, summed 
up and exceeded the might exhibited 
in all these ways, he writes with 
flaming heart and ardent pen, "The 
love of Christ constraineth us." That 
sentence was Paul's biography in 
brief. The love of Christ constrained 
him to lay his heart at the foot of 
the cross. It sustained him under 
the smitings of adversity. It in- 
flamed him with its summons to 
arduous and chivalrous service. It 
restrained him when chafed by the 
oppositions of brutality and stupid- 
ity. It remained with him in the 
lonely shadow hours of desertion and 

bereavement. The heart of Jesus 
14 



A Noble Life. 



was the dynamo that electrified his 
life. Its energy is no whit wasted. 
The circuit along which its power 
travels can still be established. When 
the negative pole of human need is 
brought into contact with the posi- 
tive pole of the grace of Christ, the 
life is pervaded with the play of 
those elemental forces which built 
Paul. Each, in our measure, may 
be charged with the same ennobling 
energy. 

I. Note the soul-saving power of 
the "love of Christ." Allusion to 
the power of Jesus, ordinarily causes 
the thought to revert to those mar- 
vels of His earthly story when He 
trod the storm-chafed sea as though 

a pavement of marble was beneath His 

15 



A Noble Life. 



sandals, — when pain and grief fled 
before His presence, like spectres at 
sunrise, when He reversed the irrev- 
ocable, and the spirits of the dead 
hastened at His call to recross the 
threshold of the tomb. But the con- 
version of a soul surpasses in display 
of divine energy those works of won- 
der recorded upon the pages of the 
evangelists. Martin Luther weighed 
every syllable when he wrote, " Re- 
generation is the greatest of mir- 
acles." The pen of inspiration made 
no slip when it inscribed in the same 
category, the creation of the universe, 
the resurrection of the Lord from the 
dead, and the conversion of the soul. 
Every time a man is converted there 

is re-creation and resurrection ; but 
16 



A Noble Life. 



there is no longer an empty void to 
be peopled with existences by a fiat 
of deity ; there is no longer a cold 
and shrouded body to be awakened 
from its death sleep by a syllable of 
power. There is a living soul, satu- 
rated and suffused with antagonism 
to the Almighty. There is a rebel 
will ; its every energy embattled 
against the Lord of Hosts. There 
is a quick and throbbing spirit, puls- 
ing with hostility to Him who sits 
upon the throne. Omnipotence can 
break that will ; but the problem is, 
to bend it. Omnipotence can crush 
that heart ; but the problem is, to 
change it. Omnipotence can grind 
that enemy into powder ; but the 

problem is, to transform antagonism 

17 



A Noble Life. 



into allegiance. Can sheer Almight- 
iness ever constrain a single indi- 
vidual to surrender his prejudices; 
prejudices that have not merely 
been engrafted by education, but 
implanted by birth ; prejudices that 
have been cultured into convictions ; 
convictions that have flowered into 
habits ; habits that have fruited 
into the seemingly necessary laws 
of being? 

Souls cannot be dragooned into 
holiness. The baton of the policeman 
cracks the skull, but cannot dent the 
heart. Hatred is not to be clubbed 
into love. Guilt may be handcuffed 
and jailed, but the logic of the 
patrol wagon and the prison cell 
does not make a bad man a better 

18 



A Noble Life. 



man. Siberia makes no allegiance 
to the Czar. State the problem and 
it seems insoluble. Jesus solved 
it. Jesus said, " I, if I be lifted up, 
will draw all men unto Me." Iron 
bends to the magnetism of the cross. 
Adamant melts under the electric 
currents of the love of Christ. 
Hearts become willing when they 
catch the meaning of Jesus* death. 
Wills become yielding when face to 
face with the crucified Redeemer. 
Mercy is stronger than might. Love 
is more potent than omnipotence. 
Tenderness is Titanic. The crown 
of thorns is more imperial than the 
wreath of laurel. It is the talisman 
of universal conquest. Saul of Tarsus 
felt its power. It changed him from 

*9 



A Noble Life. 



a pharisaic persecutor of Christians, 
into the Napoleon of the early 
church. Augustine of Carthage felt 
its power. It transformed the pagan 
roue into the prince of theological 
thinkers. Martin Luther felt its pow- 
er. It emancipated him from bondage 
to cowled superstition and anointed 
him as the pioneer champion of hu- 
man liberty. John Newton felt its 
power. It raised him from a moral 
degradation lower than that of the 
slaves he sold, and it made him a lib- 
erator of Satan's captives. John Bun- 
yan felt its power. " Grace Abound- 
ing" snatched him as a brand from 
the burning and made him a guide for 
pilgrims to the Celestial City. John 

B. Gough felt its power. It caught 
20 



A Noble Life. 



him from a gutter grave, and it 
taught him to sound the bugle-call 
of a rescue work, the echoes of which 
reverberate around the globe. Jerry 
McAuley felt its power. It floated 
the banners of eternal hope over the 
black despair of a Water Street dive. 
The magnetic pole of the world is 
marked by the socket of the cross. 
The fountain - head of the most 
triumphant of energies is the heart 
that broke on Calvary. 

II. Note the character-building 
power of the " love of Christ." 
Character to be strong must be con- 
centrated. Rays of light scattered, 
warm. Focused, they burn. So the 
love of Christ by gathering up the 
straggling beams of man's influence, 

21 



A Noble Life. 



and centering them upon a single ex- 
alted purpose, puts a fervency into life 
that can be kindled by no other flame. 
Unrestrained, the brook streams 
gently across the meadow. Enclosed 
within the narrow channel of the 
race, it drives with resistless mo- 
mentum the powerful mechanism of 
the mill. So the love of Christ, by 
cutting a man off from earthly ends, 
and hemming a man in from selfish 
aims and shutting a man up to a way 
that is strait and narrow, but high 
and holy, causes the entire machinery 
of his being to move with a power 
and momentum that is derivable 
from no other impulse. " The love 
of Christ " is the precise form of en- 
ergy for which Plato longed when, 

22 



A Noble Life. 



heartsick at the moral debasement 
of his fellow-men, he said that hu- 
manity could never be exalted, save 
by the lever of " loyalty to a divine 
person." The philosopher diagnosed 
keenly. All the after centuries have 
attested the accuracy of his insight. 
Loyalty to a divine person has point- 
ed the few paragraphs in human his- 
tory which can be read without a 
blush or tear. Loyalty to a divine 
person has cradled and nurtured the 
choicest spirits of our race: such 
typical forms of manhood as the 
princely William of Orange, who 
battled no less stoutly for the honor 
of Christ, than he did for the freedom 
of the down-trodden Netherlands; 

like the poet-statesman Milton, who 

23 



A Noble Life. 



devoted that imperial intellect which 
was the guardian of England's honor, 
to the unfolding of the ways of God 
to man ; like that intellectual giant, 
Sir Isaac Newton, whose eagle-eyed 
intellect scanned with equal interest 
the marvels of God's works, and the 
mysteries of God's word ; like big- 
brained Daniel Webster, who in the 
clear light of his evening time wrote, 
" Lord, I believe ; help Thou my un- 
belief "; like Bismarck, that man of 
iron and fire, who said, "If I were 
not a Christian and a firm believer, 
you would never have had such a 
chancellor "; like Gladstone, who not 
only lays his lance in rest for the main- 
tenance of human rights, but is ar- 
mored cap-a-pie for the honor of the 
24 



A Noble Life. 



word of God ; like Kepler and Far- 
aday ; like Herschel and Agassiz, 
like Clerk Maxwell, and Stanley, and 
Drummond, — who counted it as their 
highest achievement to think the 
thoughts of God after Him, and 
have made it their loftiest ambition 
to win the children of God back to 
Him. Loyalty to a divine Person 
is the salt-principle of humanity, alone 
preserving it from entire corruption. 
Loyalty to a divine Person is the 
leaven power of the race, alone in- 
fusing it with the energies which can 
achieve its regeneration. 

Life is not all achievement. It is 
endurance ; and to endure is a much 
harder thing than to act. It is easier 

to prance than to plod. It is easier 

25 



A Noble Life. 



for the tongue to slip its leash than 

to wear its curb. It is easier to strike 

from the shoulder than to keep the 

fingers unclenched at the side. It is 

easier to charge with the bayonet than 

to trudge with the knapsack. It is 

easier to strive than to stand, — to 

work than to wait. But " the love 

of Christ" has a magic which other 

motives lack, so to gird the heart 

that it can pace unswervingly the 

lonely sentinel beat of duty — and 

when freighted with life's mysteries, 

to suffer and be strong. 

We have counted the martyr age 

back into the distant past. We cast 

a wistful look toward "the brave 

days of old." Many a generation has 

ended its march since Polycarp 
26 



A Noble Life. 



sealed his allegiance in syllables of 
flame. Sun after sun has set since 
Latimer and Ridley kindled in the 
old Smithfield market that candle 
which, by the grace of God, never 
shall go out. But all martyrs do not 
burn at the stake. Every age and 
clime furnishes recruits for that 
noble army which is the body-guard 
of our King. Heroes of the faith 
live in every hamlet. Bearers of 
the Cross of Jesus pass us daily on 
the streets. On the martyr-rolls of 
heaven are names that are written in 
our visiting lists. In these homes 
about us — in these pews beside us — 
there is many a follower of the Christ, 
whose life is a long, weary, triumph- 
ant martyrdom. The world has 

27 



A Noble Life. 



left behind it — rack and fagot, but 
the tongue has lost none of its edge, 
nor speech its venom, since the long- 
ago day when David wrote of those 
"who whet their tongues like a 
sword, and made ready their arrows 
even bitter words," — and many a 
loyal-hearted follower of Jesus is 
standing in his lot, a lonely but un- 
flinching target for the rattling and 
rankling volleys of the world's con- 
tempt. The Gethsemane prayer for 
submission is hourly winging its way 
heavenward from hearts that can 
break, but can never desert. Crowned 
with thorns and clad in garments of 
heaviness — many a soul endures in 
suffering silence, pangs that cannot 

be measured by physical anguish, 

28 



A Noble Life. 



To-morrow morning many a soul 
will shoulder the load of its daily life 
with a spirit no less heroic than that 
with which men used to go to the 
stake, yea, with the same unquestion- 
ing trustfulness with which the Son 
of God went tottering up Golgotha. 
Have you never seen a Christian 
in loneliness and weariness, stagger- 
ing, stumbling, struggling on, broken 
in heart, bruised in spirit, but the 
brow all aglow with the radiance of a 
martyr crown ? Have you never seen 
a Christian when nerve was tingling 
and flesh quivering in the rude 
clutch of disease, dispelling the 
shadows of the sick-room by theun- 
dimmed fortitude of the martyr 

spirit ? Have you never seen the 

29 



A Noble Life, 



face of the dying Christian, in that 
hour when heart and flesh were fail- 
ing, light up with rapture as through 
the gathering gloom he beheld a 
vision of angels ? The spirit of 
worldliness may, in this latter day, 
have intruded within the hallowed 
precincts of the sanctuary. It has 
never extruded the spirit of Christ. 
Spiritual vigor may, perhaps, lie 
latent, awaiting the trumpet call 
that shall summon it to resur- 
rection. It is not dead. It only 
sleepeth. If occasion should demand 
it, there are those on the roll of 
every congregation who, rather than 
prove false to the Lord that loved 
them, would plant their feet in the 

footprints of blood and fire where 
30 



A Noble Life. 



our fathers stood, crying as they 
take their stand, " The love of Christ 
constraineth us." 

The supreme and present-day need 
of the Church is to feel afresh the 
thrill of this mighty love. The vine- 
yard of the Lord needs to be sown 
again with this seed of fire. This is 
an incandescent age. This is an era 
of burning enthusiasms. In com- 
merce and in art, in culture and in 
pleasure, men are enthusiasts. There 
is need of a kindred enthusiasm in 
religion. The times demand men of 
athletic piety, men of sinewy faith, 
men who have a vertebrate Christian- 
ity ; who can resist the shock of 
skeptic assault, who can throw off 

the malaria of popular doubt, who 

3 1 



A Noble Life. 



can stem the current of popular con- 
tempt ; men who have an intense 
and an intelligent enthusiasm for the 
honor of their blessed Lord. If the 
Church of Christ was set free from 
the thraldom of earth-born ambitions, 
from the clash and jar of party jeal- 
ousies and petty contentions, and 
was tingling in every fibre with a 
passion of love for Jesus, — glowing 
from core to circumference with con- 
suming desire for the honor of His 
name, — who can tell with what re- 
sistless swing the battle-line would 
sweep the field, and the trumpets 
peal that triumphant and longed-for 
hour when "the war-drum beats no 
longer, and the battle-flags are 
furled." Who can say what tides of 



A Noble Life. 



influence would begin to set toward 

this thrilling consummation if each 

life in this congregation became the 

exponent of a single-hearted and 

whole-souled affection for the Christ 

of Calvary? Would that it might 

be so ! Would that the Spirit of 

the living God might come in 

power; come as a rushing, mighty 

w 7 ind and fan the flame of love for 

Jesus in the hearts where it now 

burns low ; come as a heavenly fire 

and kindle with holy ardors the 

hearts that now are dark and cold ; 

come as a divine Teacher, and make 

every one of us to feel to the depth 

of our consciousness that sublimest 

truth that created intelligence can 

ever compass, " Jesus, the Son of 

33 



A Noble Life. 



God, loved me, and died to save 
my soul." Let that fact fasten its 
hold upon the heart, and life will be- 
come a boon, fraught with glorious 
possibilities. Work will become 
sweet. The future will become bright. 
All cloud will vanish. Every star 
will shine. For head and hand and 
heart will be energized with that same 
triumphant and holy enthusiasm that 
beat within the breast of that man of 
Tarsus, the throb of whose mighty 
heart we feel across nineteen centu- 
ries, as we repeat his words, " The 
love of Christ constraineth us." 



34 



H 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

021 897 409 



